If you are like me, you have a list of goals that you have for your business. In order to reach those goals my business has to be at a certain level.

One of the goals I have is to publish another author by the end of the year. Before that goal can become a reality I have to have the capital in order to enter into a contract with the author, produce and publish their book.

In spite of knowing this, I put a call for new authors on my website. To my surprise I got a few responses and I wasn’t ready to offer a publishing contract.

Needless to say I felt a little fraudulent, telling potential authors that I was not in the position to publish their books even though I put out the call for manuscripts.

After this experience I started going over my goal list and I came up with a few things I can do so I don’t get too far ahead of myself.

Break down each goal into action steps.

Make sure any money I’m spending on a goal is a good investment.

Ask myself is this really a goal or something I think I “should ” be doing.

Don’t place hard time lines on reaching a particular goal. Personally I don’t do well with hard time lines. Instead I have check in dates so I can see if I’m making progress and make the necessary adjustments.

Focus on where my business is in the moment and how I can capitalize on it.

Revise my business plan to make sure my focus hasn’t changed.

As business owners, we all want to grow our businesses into self sustaining entities. The desire to get there may have us jumping the gun from time to time. But if we take time to look at our goals and focus on where we are in the moment we can avoid wasting time energy and money.

What decision have you made based on where you want your business to be?